LATEST STORIES IN LETTERS

This refers to a letter by a British, “Criticism of Israel in UK is open and loud,” published on Dec. 3 in Arab News.
Yes, all of us must condemn the killings and atrocities that were inflicted upon the Jews by the Nazi forces. In the same vein, we must not mince words in denouncing acts of violence, plunder and killings by the British regime in the countries it invaded, occupied and ruled for centuries. As the saying went then, ‘The Sun never sets on the British Empire,’ so also the fact that there was never a day when the Empire’s hand was not painted in blood. In most of the cases, they paid no heed to the future of the countries, which they left in turmoil or created partitions and divisions on ethnic, racial and religious grounds.
Again, it was the British regime that had sown the first seed for creating Israel under Balfour Declaration on Nov. 17, 1917 to satiate the demands of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. Although, it was indicated in the Declaration that nothing would be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non Jewish communities in Palestine, we know that not only the rights of the Palestinians have since been totally prejudiced, but they have also been fully curtailed, trampled and decimated under the successive regimes. It did not stop there even and continued killing and maiming indiscriminately the unarmed people, including the helpless women and children after throwing them out from their lands.
In short, the plan did not end up with a creation of Israel to accommodate the Jews who were displaced during the Holocaust, but it resulted in the occupation of the entire Palestine land with a hegemonic design to extend its dominion to as wider extent as possible in order to safeguard the interests of the community for generations to come.
We should also not forget that there have been several instances of ethnic cleansing in the recent times and is still happening in many places. The international community did not help create a separate nation for the Bosnians or Croats when they suffered gravely at the hands of the Serbs. Nor will it create a State for the Rohingya Muslims who are being killed and thrown out of their lands in Burma by the Rakhine forces.
There is a greater need for applying the principles of equity, justice and fairness universally by the international community without carrying any predetermined prejudices and bearing in mind just the political and economic interests. — Safi H. Jannaty, Dammam